A very tall youth in cadet uniform came up to our group. He was a nephew of the Court Marshal of Nassau, and begged to be introduced; Baron Friedrich von Hadeln. The young man saluted respectfully first the older ladies, then, with equal respect, us two. We thanked him graciously: we really were, then, already veritable young ladies. Friedrich von Hadeln—he may have been eighteen years old—had strikingly noble features, a sort of Roman head. He talked very vivaciously, addressing especially us two. Elvira could not overcome her bashfulness, and remained reticent. I reaped the benefit of the conversational practice in our games of puff, and engaged in a lively dialogue. The main action of the plot began at once on the next day. Aunt Lotti betook herself to the roulette table and won. While she was in the gaming-room we two girls stayed out on the terrace under my mother’s protection. And when my mother then went about her serious task—likewise winning on the first days—Aunt Lotti took up the business of watching over us. My youth fell in a time when a girl of good family must not stay a quarter of an hour unwatched. Ten steps across the street alone—that must not happen; by that one would have been, if not lost, yet irremediably compromised. The chaperon system, from which the young womanhood of to-day has made its escape by the bicycle, by the tennis-racket, and by the total change of standpoint in general, was then in its fullest vogue. The thriving business of the millions (each had already doubled her working capital) was carried on only in the forenoon; the afternoon was filled out at the Kur music, or in walks to the Dietenmühle or the Greek chapel, and very frequently young Hadeln joined us. In the villa next door to us there lived an English family, Sir and Lady Tancred, with a seventeen-year-old daughter named Lucy. My cousin became violently infatuated with Lucy, but the little Englishwoman preferred me. I remember a call that the Tancred family made upon us, when the mother (who, be it said, was expecting very soon to be again a mother) sat down to the piano and sang an English ballad. The lady, who may have been thirty-four to thirty-five, seemed to us inordinately old, and the recollection of her performance remained in our memory for years as a fearfully comical episode. To be sure, she also sang without any voice, and with that English exaggeration of accented syllables which in itself is so unmusical. To choke down our laughter cost us an unspeakable effort at the time, and for years it continued to be a favorite comic performance in our circle when I sat down to the piano and sang as Lady Tancred “Oh—remembrance will come and remembrance will go—oh!”